But was that enough for me for the rest of my life?
You know the answer to that, Neenee Bean, I heard Charlie say in my head and I jumped, lurching up, and looked around, seeing no one.
I’d heard Charlie talking to me on occasion but it was remembering things he’d said or knowing what he would say. He’d never talked to me talked to me.
“Maybe this timeout wasn’t a good thing,” I whispered to the room. “Maybe it was a bad thing.”
Charlie didn’t answer, no one did.
And I decided, since I was hearing voices, that maybe a nap was a good thing.
* * * * *
“Nina.”
My eyes opened and I saw Max’s face close to mine. I also felt his fingers digging into my hip. I was on my side in his bed and he was sitting in the crook of my lap.
“Jesus, you sleep like the dead,” he muttered, pulling back only his head, his hand stayed where it was.
I saw the TV was blue screen and the sun was fading. It was getting dark which meant it was getting late.
I rolled my head slightly on the pillow to look up at him, still not quite awake and asked, “What?”
“I thought it was because you were sick but you sleep like the dead,” Max informed me then he lifted his hand not at my hip and he took a bite out of a chocolate chip cookie.
My eyes narrowed on the cookie. “Are those my cookies?”
He chewed, swallowed then said, “Yeah,” then shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth.
I got up on an elbow and said, “But those are mine.”
“Honey, they’re in my house, they’re fair game.”
“I see this sharing the house business isn’t going to work,” I told him and he grinned.
“They’re f**kin’ good cookies, babe, but there’re about three dozen of them. You gonna eat them all?”
“Yes,” I bit out.
“Well, you’ll have to eat them all but four,” he told me.
“You had four?”
“Yeah,” he replied, ignoring my tone and possibly the lethal look on my face before he went on. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
His hand suddenly moved from my hip to my shoulder, his finger traced skin there and I felt that my shirt had fallen down. I yanked it up, sat up and scooted up to the headboard.
His hand dropped to the bed at the other side of my thighs so he was leaning across me and he said, “Yeah, dinner, I’m takin’ you to town for a burger.”
“You’re taking me to town for a burger?”
He tipped his head to the side and asked, “You gonna repeat everything I say?”
“No.”
“Good,” he said, pushed up off the bed, grabbed my hand before I could evade his clutch and yanked me to my feet in a way I could neither ignore nor fight. “Get yourself sorted out. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”